Tag Archives: suicide

Jun 1 2011

Deja Vu

Edited on June 2 – this post is a pity party, so you are welcome to not read it. I am feeling better this morning, and I am closing comments. I’m leaving it up, though, so that in the future I can look back and see how silly I am sometimes.

My cousin, L, is in the hospital again. On Sunday my aunt called to tell me that L wasn’t doing well and was going into the hospital, but when I talked to her on Monday she hadn’t gone, and didn’t really want to go. Yesterday, though, she decided it would be best and luckily they had a bed open.

I went to visit her tonight. It was just like back in March – nothing in the hospital has changed. The nurses in the psych unit are the same, but the patients are different.

She asked me to bring her a brownie, which brought back memories of her asking me to pick up Chipotle despite the fact that she had just taken an overdose.

She was very talkative. The visiting hour is just that, one hour, and it flew by, with me not doing much talking. She talked a lot about her father, and the old days, and how her mother and my father didn’t talk for so long, and how my mother can be difficult, but she thinks her mother and my mother should not have had such a dysfunctional relationship, etc. Then she asked me again about when I was feeling suicidal, and why. And I told her about how I was getting more and more depressed, and I was approaching my 50th birthday, and my daughter was leaving home, and I didn’t have a great job, and I was afraid of getting sick and dying like my father who had to stop working when he was 53 because he was so sick, and how I will never let myself get like he was, and how I felt like there was no purpose for me anymore, etc etc.

I didn’t really want to think about these things right now. I was just telling someone a couple of days ago that I was feeling kind of good lately. But yesterday I wasn’t feeling good at all, maybe it was because L went back in to the hospital, or my session with J yesterday, or a combination of things. I saw my health coach tonight, and I wasn’t very enthusiastic. I told her that I was frustrated with my inability to lose weight more quickly. I think she is discouraging me from losing weight, and I think J is too. If I want to lose weight, then that is my choice. That is why I hired her.

And the last time my cousin was in the hospital I would come home from visiting her every night and have two or three glasses of wine. I’ll be honest, there have been times in the last two months when I craved a glass of wine, but I don’t have any in the house so I am not drinking. And I don’t want to, but tonight, coming home from the hospital, and having promised my aunt that I would call her to tell her about my visit with L, I really craved a drink.

Luckily when I called my aunt I got her voice mail, because I really can’t handle talking to her. I don’t want to deal with her again. I am happy to help L in any way that I can, same as last time, but I do not want the crap with my aunt again. She started in again the other day, about her ex-husband and how awful he was 30 years ago, blah blah. Finally she said, oh well that doesn’t matter now. Right.

I think I’ll go to bed. I’m hungry, I want a drink, I’m frustrated with my weight loss progress, I’m angry at the health coach and at my therapist, it is all totally irrational. Going to sleep is rational. And if my husband dares to snore I can’t be held responsible for bashing his head in with the bedside lamp.

May 31 2011

Therapy Recap 5/31/11

J got a new couch. At first I just noticed the new pillows, then when I sat down I was looking at the couch and he told me he got a new one. Guess what color it is? Beige! I wonder if therapists go to a special store to buy beige couches?

We talked about the food issue again, and I told J that I was obsessing about food and exercise. I said that I know what I am doing is ridiculous, why do I need to weigh myself so much, why do I need to weigh myself before I go to bed? There isn’t anything I can do about it. I told him about how I have been reading about other people doing this “Intuitive Eating” thing, but I can’t trust my intuition. I went out with my son the other night, and I thought I wasn’t hungry, but then I thought maybe I am just convincing myself that I am not hungry. I can’t tell anything anymore, and I don’t know what a “normal” meal is. We talked about normal, and I said that apparently the “normal” American meal isn’t such a healthy choice. I asked him what was wrong with ordering a salad with grilled salmon with the dressing on the side, and he said there is nothing wrong with it.

I told him about how I have been thinking lately that women don’t ever talk about their weights. That I think every woman weighs 120 pounds, unless they are really little, then they weigh 110. But I see the women on the biggest loser who look great and weigh in the 150’s, and my cousin when she was in the hospital told the nurses that she weighed 150 and I thought that seemed way too high, she seems like a little thing to me, and a woman who’s blog I read who lost 100 pounds and reached her goal weight of 162 at Weight Watchers. I said it is really surprising to me that women who look good weigh more than 120 pounds. He asked me what would happen if I was at a place like Weight Watchers where you have to weigh yourself in public, and I set him straight about that! I told him that all weights are private, you step on the scale and the number is behind the counter and they write it in your booklet. Weight is a big secret in our society.

I told him about a restaurant I went to for lunch a couple of weeks ago and I was looking at what everyone was eating. Every woman was eating a salad with the dressing on the side, and every man was eating a burger, fries, crabcake sandwiches, etc. He asked me if the women were thin and the men were portly, and I said I didn’t even notice their body types, just what they were eating. Can’t women eat burgers and fries? I can’t – that would be my whole calorie allowance for the day and I wouldn’t be able to eat anything else.

J asked if I could go a day without weighing myself, and I said that I did that once last year, and I didn’t eat much all day because I knew I couldn’t weigh myself the next day, so I had to be careful. Logically I know that is ridiculous. I should just eat the way I eat, the scale doesn’t affect anything.

We talked about how my mood for the day depends on the number on the scale. I said, how else can I judge myself each day if not using weight? He said I don’t need to be judging myself first of all, and how about using different criteria – how I am as a person for example.

Somehow we got onto the subject of if I can relax at the beach, and I said I could. J asked if I could sit on the beach and think my life is good. I asked him if that is his definition of relaxing, because if it is, then, no, I cannot relax. We got back onto the subject of my life not being good, and he asked me again, for the millionth time, about the things that are good and not good. The not good things are the relationship with my husband, my lack of a career, my self esteem issues and never feeling good enough. The good things are my health, my family’s health, my friends, security, living in a safe place, etc.

He asked what would make it better, and I said if I lost 20 pounds right now I would feel better. Of course I know that is ridiculous, and we did talk about what would happen if I lost 4 more pounds, would I want to lose 2 more pounds, and then 2 more after that. I said that if my marriage either gets better or ends, life would be better than it is now. As for the career, I don’t know what I can do about that.

We talked about my dinner with my husband last weekend and how I ate a regular meal, and asked him the question I was supposed to ask. I told J that my husband seemed happy when I told him about the health coach telling me I should go out for a real meal, and that when I asked him about the retirement plan he answered me and answered both of my questions. J said that he was surprised, because based on what I have told him he didn’t think my husband would want to go out with me in the first place, and wouldn’t want to talk about finances. He asked me if I think my husband likes me, and I said that I think he does, and I like him.

J wanted me to ask my husband some more about the retirement details, and I said I don’t really worry about it because I don’t really plan to live that long. He asked me if I plan to die by suicide, and I said I don’t know, maybe. But I told him not to worry, I don’t plan on doing anything today. I really didn’t want to get into the whole thing about getting sick, getting old, etc. That is another can of worms that I couldn’t deal with opening today.

Now J wants me to go out for another regular meal with my husband and talk to him about how I am dissatisfied with my lack of a career and accomplishments. I expressed doubt that my husband would be much interested in this topic, but I said that I would do it, just so I could tell J how my husband reacts.

He asked what would make my marriage better and I said that if we had anything in common, if we liked to do things together, if he listens to me and remembers what I say, if he doesn’t walk out of the room when I am in the middle of telling him something, that would make it better. J said it is like my husband and I have parallel lives, which is true.

Towards the end of the session I got the feeling that J was getting frustrated with me. He was talking about something about how I use the eating and exercising to keep myself in this limbo of never being good enough, and when he paused I said, “Are you mad at me?” He said no, and I said, “Why are you sitting like that?” He had his legs crossed and his arms crossed, and he never sits like that. He said some bullshit thing about being cold, which is ridiculous, because I am always the one who is cold, and I was not cold, I was actually a bit warm probably due to it being 95 degrees out, and he never turns the a/c way down because he knows I get cold.

I guess I am frustrating to him, because I see everything intellectually, but I can’t behave the way my mind is telling me I should. I didn’t really think much about the session this afternoon, but this evening I am feeling down. I am watching the documentary “How To Die In Oregon”, about terminally ill people in Oregon who choose assisted suicide to end their lives. Oregon was the first state to legalize this (there are only two others). It is very sad that there are people out there who are dying and they don’t want to die. And I was reading a clothing catalog from Athleta, full of young, toned, thin women playing beach volleyball in bikinis and doing headstands in halter tops, and it just made me feel kind of sick. I know it seems vain, to not want to get old or sick, to have the body I had 20 years ago. But I think it is more than that.

I read an article in the newspaper this weekend about middle aged women and how their lives are better than they were when they were younger because they have self confidence and so many accomplishments. I wish I could be one of those, but instead my confidence gets worse and worse as I get older. Maybe because I don’t have those accomplishments, and I don’t have much purpose. I’m just down right now. Sometimes I hate therapy.

Apr 12 2011

Therapy Recap 4/12/11

Last night I sent J my blog post from Saturday, about opening up to my good friend. I told him I didn’t feel like telling the whole story, it was easier to just let him read it, and we could talk about it or not. I told him that I thought he would like what I did.

So today we did talk about it a little, he brought it up immediately. I told him that my cousin somewhat inspired me to do this, because I see how she is open with people in her life and she can call them when she needs help. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to that point, but telling someone was a start. I also talked about my other friend who I emailed back in December telling her a little about my circumstances and she told me to read Eckhart Tolle. Then when she came to visit in January she didn’t mention anything about it for the first hour and a half. Finally she said, “So are you over your crisis, or whatever that was?”

I told J that she is a good friend, but obviously not so good in this particular situation. He told me that I must have seemed perfectly normal when we got together, so maybe she was hesitant to bring it up. He said people often times don’t know what to say, and he gave the example of a friend of his who has a very sick wife, and when J sees him he doesn’t know what to say. So we talked about that for a while.

Then I talked about the stress and anxiety about my cousin, how anxious and sick feeling I was when I went to her house for the first time since the incident, and then we went out to dinner at the same shopping center where the Chipotle was. I also told him I have bad thoughts that just pop into my head about the ER, and also bad dreams. He asked me about the dreams, and I said I have been having a lot of beach dreams, which I have had all of my life, and also dreams about hospitals where I am the patient. He asked me about my beach dreams, and I told him that I am usually facing the ocean and there is a brick wall or a building behind me. The tide keeps coming in and in, and I am trapped. And sometimes I have dreams about my son drowning (I think this is due to an incident I had at the beach with him when he was a baby. But nothing bad happened.)

J told me that perhaps I am having these dreams more right now because I felt trapped when I went to the shopping center to get Chipotle for my cousin, and the dream is about being trapped. He said it is not uncommon for people to have dreams with a recurring theme for a long period of time, even decades, even their whole lives. He asked me about the beach, and I said I like the beach, despite the dreams.

J said it is normal that I would have these anxiety reactions, that the brain makes associations very quickly, but unassociates things very slowly. I said that sucks. He told me the more I go to my cousin’s house, the less anxious I will be. Like even though I have bad dreams about the beach, I still like to go there. I told him how weird it was that her house looked the same as it did that day. I don’t know why I would think that is weird, but it is. He said it is like the fear of flying, that the more I did it the less anxious I became. I told him I had to take a klonopin when I went to her house on Saturday, because I had been so anxious when I went on Thursday.

Then somehow we got off onto a tangent. This is when the session went from good to fair. I guess I was trying to tell J that this is bad time for me to be desensitizing myself to Chipotle and my cousin’s house, because last year at this time was a very bad time for me and I want to avoid that happening this year. He said he remembered that, and the time around my birthday. He asked me if I can get past bad feelings by thinking about the future, if I feel badly can I think how I will feel in one hour, or one day, or one week? I said I have a lot of trouble with that, I don’t look ahead and I have no idea how I will feel in the future. He seemed to think this would be a good way to avoid a repeat of last year. He said when he woke up today he was very tired, but he thought to himself, “I’ll just have some coffee and in two hours I’ll be feeling better.” I said he really can’t compare being tired to being suicidal, and he did agree that this will not work when one is at the bottom of the hole, but just to get past bad times. I was confused by what he was talking about and even asked him what was the point of this. I really wanted to get more into concrete ways to avoid falling into the April/May/June depression from last year.

He didn’t ask what I am doing to try to avoid it, and he was talking so much about the thinking about the future idea that I didn’t have time to say any more. And I can see that what he said made sense, but he tends to go on and on. So in case you are wondering what I am doing to avoid falling back into the hole, I have started running again (although I was running last year at this time and it didn’t help, but I figure running is better than not running), I quit drinking so much (I don’t have any wine in the house, and even though I have a lot of liquor and beer, I really prefer wine, so I don’t drink anything else), I’ve been on Wellbutrin since January, and I’m going to Florida on Thursday for a week to avoid mine and my husband’s toxic families for Passover. I am also trying to lose some weight, or at least get into better shape. I don’t think these things are enough though, and tomorrow it will be one month until my birthday and I am really dreading this month.

This afternoon I had an anxiety attack at work. I couldn’t figure out why I was so anxious. I lost my appetite halfway through my salad, my hands were shaking, and my stomach was in knots. Maybe it is because I was talking about flying on Thursday, and I’m taking Southwest, which had a plane develop a hole in the fuselage last week. They grounded all of their planes to inspect them, which I guess makes this a good time to fly. J was telling me the physics of holes in planes and how a person can’t get sucked out, that only happens in the movies.

So I would say this session was good to fair. It kind of sucks that it wasn’t great at the end and I won’t see him for two weeks, since I’ll be away next week. But the next time I see him I will try to make more of an effort to convey how anxious I am about this time of year, especially coming on the heels of the whole hospital thing with my cousin. Sometimes he and I just miss each other, I think that is natural, and we have had quite a few good sessions in the last month or two. It’s ok.

Mar 29 2011

Therapy Recap 3/29/11

J and I talked more about my cousin today. He asked how she is doing, and I told him that yesterday was her fourth ect treatment and she had some short term memory loss, which was scary. She couldn’t remember her address or what her house looks like. We talked about ect and its pros and cons for awhile.

Then I brought up the same thing I talked about last week, the thing that has been bothering me. What it is is this. My cousin called me that Saturday at 3:30PM. She told me about the overdose and I said I’d be right over. It takes at least 35 to 40 minutes to get there. I asked her if there is anything she needed, and she said she needed some food. She said she thought she had some Chipotle in the refrigerator (I know Chipotle restaurants are in limited areas so some of you might not know what a Chipotle is, but they are abundant here.) I said maybe she would like Chipotle food that hasn’t been sitting in the refrigerator, and she said she would like me to stop at Chipotle and she told me what she wanted.

So I drove to her city, and then plugged Chipotle into my navigation system and saw there was one 1 mile from her house. I went there, and it was in a huge shopping center, bigger than any that we have in this area. And now it was 4:30 on a Saturday, and this shopping center also had a movie theater with 10 theaters, and it was packed with cars and they were all inching along. I couldn’t even find the Chipotle in there. I saw Panera, Noodles and Co., and every other chain restaurant. Finally I rolled down the window and asked someone where the Chipotle was. I was feeling extremely anxious at this point.

I drove over there (it was in a separate building from the main center) and luckily someone was pulling out of a spot right in front, so I pulled in. I walked into the Chipotle, and there was a huge line, as there ALWAYS is in every Chipotle. At that point I called my cousin and said there was too long a wait, and she said she didn’t want any food anyway. So then I drove to her house.

So that is the true story. My cousin took an overdose, I didn’t call 911, and I stopped at Chipotle to get her food. I talked about it with J last week, and he told me that I made good decisions, I got her help, and she didn’t die. I talked about it again this week, how it makes me question my judgment and my intelligence. I said that maybe I was afraid of what I would find at her house, so I delayed it by making a stop, which is so selfish of me. I think that if everyone who is praising me knows I did this stupid thing, they wouldn’t think so highly of me.

J again tried to reassure me that I did what I thought was best at the time. I did not know what the lethal dose of acetaminophen was, I did not know that one must get treatment within 8 hours, and I did not know she was very sick. He said that she was not slurring her words or acting sick in any way so how could I know the seriousness of this. And he said I changed my course of action when I got to the Chipotle and saw the long line. He said I did nothing that I should be regretting.

I asked J if I did do something stupid or bad, would he even tell me? He asked what would be stupid or bad? I said, what if I stopped at Chipotle on my way to my cousin’s because I was hungry. Would he say “You have to take care of yourself before you take care of others, like on an airplane when the oxygen masks come down you have to put on yours before you take care of your child?” I told him about my cousin’s mother, who has been in therapy for 10 years and has the same issues, it seems her therapist just reinforces whatever she tells her.

J said that he would not make a judgment about this type of behavior, but he would ask me about it. If I decided to stop for food before going to my overdosing cousin’s house, he would ask me to explore why I did this.

He told me that I now need to go to Chipotle, to desensitize myself, because I said that I am purposely avoiding driving certain ways because there would be a Chipotle there. I said that I think I would throw up if I went into one. He told me to park in the parking lot and stay there five minutes. Then go in and use the restroom.

He said that he has never eaten at Chipotle (what? How can this be?) and he saw one the other day and was thinking of trying it, but then he remembered how I said there is always a long line, so he didn’t. I wonder if he will think of me every time he sees a Chipotle, which around here would be pretty often. I said, “I guess I should be glad that my cousin didn’t ask me to stop at Starbucks.” (They are on every corner.)

Later in the session, when he was reassuring me for the 100th time, he said he was not just blowing smoke or telling me what I want to hear. He said that he also did not know many of the things I learned from this experience, in regards to the treatment for this type of overdose. He told me that last week one of his other clients took five Lexapro. In the past he would not have been worried about whether the person would die, but since hearing my cousin’s experience, he called the prescribing psychiatrist and tried to really find out if five Lexapro would be life threatening.

He said that he doesn’t know what my aunt’s therapist or therapy is like, but perhaps her therapist realizes that my aunt is not a strong person, is easily overwhelmed, and to protect her she has advised my aunt that she can’t be so involved in my cousin’s life.

Then I told J that my good aunt, the one I have a relationship with (who J calls “the good aunt of the east”, to differentiate her from “the wicked aunt of the west” – which cracked me up, and is all due to the fact that I never give him anyone’s names, he even said today “I don’t know their names”) told me a few days before my cousin’s overdose that she felt there was some manipulation going on. And yesterday when my cousin wasn’t feeling well after her ect treatment I told her that I would call the nurse’s station, and my aunt again said that I am being manipulated, that my cousin should learn to ask for things herself. J told me that from what I am telling him he doesn’t see manipulation, and he explained what manipulation would look like to him.

J then told me that this experience is a microcosm of how I live my life. That I did so much for my cousin, I might have saved her life, but I am focusing on a 20 minute period when I think I did something wrong. And he doesn’t even think I did anything wrong, I did what I thought was best given my knowledge of the situation. I am always too hard on myself, set too high expectations for myself, and never live up to them. He told me again, for the 200th time, that I did well in this situation, that I should regret nothing.

He asked me if I would do the same thing again. I told him that I would not stop at Chipotle, as for the rest I don’t know. Then I said that if I did know what I know now, I would have called 911 as opposed to taking her to the hospital, because when it actually happened I did not know about the 8 hour time frame for starting treatment. But if I again had not known this, I would probably do the same thing again, without the Chipotle.

I have to lot to think about in regards to the Chipotle. In addition to reminding me that I might have made a poor choice that day, Chipotle also brings up fearful feelings in me, like I am remembering the experience at my cousin’s house and in the ER and ICU. How could I get scared by a Chipotle? It’s just a restaurant.

Mar 15 2011

No T Today – 3/15/11

Remember I missed T last week because my mother was having surgery and I was with her in the hospital? I am unexpectedly not having t today either, because on Saturday my cousin attempted suicide, luckily called me, and I have been in the hospital with her since then. I did email J to fill him in, and ask him some questions about her overdose, and I bravely asked if I could reschedule for some other time during the week. He gave me helpful information, and said of course I could reschedule.

Unfortunately, we are taking everything on a day to day basis, so I don’t even know when I would be able to go see him.

My cousin had a rough couple of days, I really thought she might die, but she is getting better. Now she is waiting for a bed on the mental health unit floor, hopefully that will be available later this afternoon.

That is why I have no T recap today.

Feb 27 2011

What Do You Think I Should Do?

As I mentioned, my cousin called me last Sunday saying she isn’t doing well and has attempted suicide twice in the last two months. We talked (or she did) for 50 minutes on the phone. There wasn’t much I could say, but I tried my best. We decided to get together this weekend.

Monday I emailed her saying I hope she is ok and I think it is great that we are getting together over the weekend, that I can’t wait to see her. No response.

Tuesday I emailed her asking for her address. Within an hour she got back to me with her address. I just had a feeling, I don’t know what it was, but I wanted to go see her Tuesday night. I called my aunt and asked her opinion, she said I could wait for the weekend, but if I had an intuition I should go sooner. So that night I drove to my cousin’s house (she is about 40 minutes away). Luckily my aunt had talked to her on the phone about half an hour before I got there and told her I was on my way.

When I arrived it was somewhat awkward. She didn’t know why I came, and I felt uncomfortable. Her twelve year old son was there as well (she and her husband are divorced and their son goes back and forth since they live nearby each other). But we sat at the dining room table and started to talk, then we went upstairs so her son wouldn’t hear everything. We laid on her bed and talked a lot, and cried some. She said she was glad I came because had a feeling it would be a bad night. I was glad I went too.

When I left, after about three hours, she again said how glad she was that I had come, and we’ll get together over the weekend.

Friday I emailed her to see what we would do, and she called and said she was tired, she couldn’t come over, but maybe Saturday or Sunday. So we decided on Sunday. Last night I emailed her and she called today, Sunday, crying and upset, saying she wasn’t doing well, she had a bad day yesterday and a bad night, a lot of bad thoughts and suicidal ideation. Another friend was with her and she took some klonopin and is hoping to fall asleep for a bit and then I can come over in a little while. Whether she wants me to or not I’m going to go over there this afternoon.

In the meantime I wrote to the director of the crisis hotline where I worked asking for recommendations for inpatient treatment. I think that is what my cousin needs, but she says the facilities in her location are pretty bad. She is afraid to talk to her therapist or psychiatrist about her thoughts because she doesn’t want them to commit her.

I don’t know what to do really. I don’t think there is anything I can do. I can sit with her and talk with her, but that isn’t a solution. My aunt suggested she call NIH and see if she can get treatment there, but she is reluctant to call. I am going to see if she will let me call and get information on her behalf. I just don’t know what else to do, and I don’t think I can be very helpful since I’m not in a very good place emotionally or mentally right now either. I’m afraid we’ll end up with a suicide pact and we’ll both take our lives together.

Many of us have been in her situation – can you tell me what you thought would have been helpful for you? I just don’t know. Thank you.

Jan 30 2011

Bill Zeller

Lately many friends and others on the internet have been writing about Bill Zeller, a 27 year old victim of child sexual abuse who committed suicide this month. His suicide letter is available everywhere on the internet, just google him if you would like to read it. He started writing it a year ago, and had been thinking about his suicide for that long.

Here is an excerpt from The Daily Princetonian on January 7, 2011:

Friends and colleagues said they were shocked by the note’s contents.

“Even to us, his closest friends here, we didn’t know about 80 percent of what he wrote in the note or how he was feeling,” said Harlan Yu GS, one of Zeller’s roommates for the past two years. “I never had any hints living with him for a year and half that this was what he was experiencing on a daily basis. That’s why it was so shocking that he could have hid it so well … Reading the note it was in his voice, but the things that he was saying is such a far cry from everything that we knew about him.”

In contrast to the troubled person portrayed in the note, those closest to him remembered Zeller as a brilliant programmer, talented chef, devoted Boston Red Sox fan and someone who put his friends first.

“One of the hardest parts for me to read in all that was the fact that he didn’t seem to see himself as being a good person. He just went out of his way so many times for me that there’s no way you could have faked what he was doing or who he was,” said Joe Calandrino GS, a close friend who worked with Zeller on a number of computer science projects. “He showed a level of caring that I don’t think I see out of most people. And I don’t know how he could have even achieved that.”

While at Princeton, Zeller conducted computer security research at the Center for Information Technology Policy under his adviser Ed Felten, a computer science and Wilson School professor and director of CITP.

During that time, Zeller completed several high-profile projects. He and Felten published research exposing serious security vulnerabilities of websites such as The New York Times, YouTube and ING Direct. Zeller also co-authored an influential paper arguing for increased government transparency online.

When asked to discuss Zeller’s work, however, colleagues focused on the dozens of smaller projects that he completed in the past few years, which ranged from the practical — such as Graph Your Inbox, a tool to analyze and visualize Gmail activity over time — to IsItChristmas.com, which reads “no” 364 days of the year.

“I think he was just one of the most creative people that I knew,” Yu said. “A lot of the software he did certainly touched millions of people. He was always coming up with ingenious ideas that would often be funny and practical and also useful to those around him.”

“He would come up with an idea and he would dedicate his next week just because he was so motivated and excited about building something that lots of people could use, that people would find useful,” he added.

Before coming to Princeton, Zeller had already established himself as a young star in computer programming.

As a sophomore at Trinity College, where he graduated with honors in computer science in 2006, Zeller created myTunes, a free program that allows music purchased from iTunes to be downloaded to other computers. It was downloaded more than 3 million times.

Other early work included the open-source blogging platform Zempt, which has since been integrated into the widely used Moveable Type blog software.

“Bill’s work really grew out of his basic approach to life and to his interactions with his friends and colleagues, which was to look for concrete things he could do that could help people,” said Felten, who is serving in a yearlong post in Washington as the Federal Trade Commission’s chief technologist and returned to campus after the incident. On Thursday, Felten published a post in tribute to Zeller on the CITP blog, Freedom to Tinker.

Felten also emphasized Zeller’s commitment to mentoring undergraduates.

“I might not be in computer science but for him. He definitely had a major impact on my life, and I know that he’s had a major impact on a lot of others,” said Jennifer King ’11, who became a close friend of Zeller’s after he advised her work at a campus summer research program. “He’s not someone that I will ever forget because he was so instrumental in directing my life here. He’s not going to disappear into oblivion, which I think is one of the most important signs of a great life.”

According to friends, once Zeller set a goal, he would not rest until he was finished. “Once he decided he wanted to do something, he was almost obsessive with his desire to complete that and see it through,” said Joal Mendonsa, Zeller’s sophomore-year roommate at Trinity. “He basically wrote [myTunes] in a month without really sleeping. He would decide to work out more and would work out every single day for the next seven months.”

In his note, Zeller wrote that intense computer coding allowed him to escape his troubled thoughts for brief periods.

“As a computer scientist, he was an implementer; he was a doer,” King said. “He had this unbelievable creativity that allowed him to come up with crazy ideas, but then he’d actually go and do the crazy ideas, which is something that a lot of people don’t necessarily [do]. Those two qualities aren’t necessarily found in the same person.”

He was also heavily involved in the Graduate Student Government and chaired its facilities committee. “GSG is just one place among many on campus where Bill had many friends and will be missed,” said Kevin Collins, GSG president.

Jeff Dwoskin GS ’10, who co-chaired the facilities committee with Zeller last year, said Zeller’s many contributions included creating a program that tracked University shuttles’ locations and noted whether they were on schedule, a project he completed in a day.

“That was kind of his style, just to do something and make it work in a timeframe that was unbelievable to anyone else. He always impressed us with his ideas and abilities, no matter what the task,” Dwoskin said.

Zeller set himself apart from fellow graduate students in the number of people he reached with his work. “Grad school is the kind of place where you do work that only a few people see or you develop an idea so you can write about it and get it published, but he went the extra step to get things to the public that people used, real tools that had many real users. That’s something that a lot of graduate students can’t say,” said Ari Feldman GS, who worked with Zeller at CITP.

Posts about Zeller’s death on the prominent technology blog Gizmodo and the online community MetaFilter have drawn hundreds of comments, including testimony from those who use his programs.

Despite the positive impact Zeller had on his friends and those who used his programs, he wrote in his note that he chose to end his life to stop hurting those around him, as well as to end 23 years of pain caused by childhood sexual abuse.

“Maybe there’s nothing that could have been done,” said Joseph Hall, a postdoctoral researcher at CITP. “But I like to think in some parallel universe there’s a Bill Zeller out there who found a way to begin to heal himself. It’s a great loss for us.”

Sounds like a real competent guy, doesn’t he? He could do everything! And he did everything well, and quickly, and cheerfully, and wanted to help people. People were “impressed” by him. No one would ever think there was anything wrong with him, because he was so “competent” and “impressive”. He was larger than life.

After being competent and impressive for so long, how could a person reveal what is really going on? And let people down? No way. Better to just suffer in silence until you can’t take it anymore, and then just end it.

Unfortunately his death was not very easy. I am not sure how Bill attempted to end his life, but he was left on life support for three days, until it was determined that the best thing to do was to remove him from this artificial way of living and allow him to do what he wanted to do – die.

I hate giving unasked for advice. But if you know someone who is incredibly competent, someone who you are constantly impressed by, you might want to ask him every once in a while – “Hey, are you ok?” Ask him what he is thinking about, ask him what makes him sad or anxious or fearful. Tell him it’s ok to be less than perfect with you, that you don’t need to be impressed by him, that the fact that he is a human being gives him value in your eyes. That’s all.

Nov 2 2010

Therapy Recap 11/2/10

Today I noticed that J and I follow a very predictable pattern in our sessions. It goes like this (and the time estimates are completely and totally my perception, not reality at all.)

1. J says, “What are we talking about today?” (2 seconds)
2. I fidget, squirm, look around, try to speak, say stupid things like, “What do you want to talk about?” (2 minutes)
3. I finally speak about whatever it is I plan to talk about, or give a list of various items. (5 minutes)
4. Question and answer session, where J tries to get more information about what I am talking about, to tries to delve into the issues. (15 minutes)
5. J talks and talks and talks. He gives his insights, his metaphors (lions anyone?), his interpretations, his personal disclosures. (23 minutes minus 2 seconds)
6. He says it is time to finish up, walks to his desk, still talking, I get up, say “Thank you” and leave. Sometimes he is still talking.

It’s nice having a routine.

So we began as usual. J said, “What are we talking about today?” And I squirmed, and fidgeted and looked out the window, and around the room, and said, “What do you want to talk about?” and finally I said, “I had an appointment with my psychiatrist and it was really great.” So he asked what was great about it. Then I pulled out the notes I had made. Kind of silly to do all of the squirming, when I had everything written down. I had written down all of the things my pdoc and I had talked about last week – it took up the fronts and backs of two index cards. The problem was when I was writing it I was wearing my reading glasses, and when I was trying to read it to J I didn’t have my glasses. All I bring in with me is my car key. Oops.

So I read through the whole list. Interrupting myself periodically to say, “It would help if I could read this,” or “This is in no particular order.” My voice was shaking and I was really anxious, and I was trying to just tear through the list. I think I was talking very quickly. I peeked at J every once in a while, and he was really good. He only interrupted a couple of times, I think he knew if I stopped I wouldn’t be able to restart. I made it through the whole list.

His responses were:

He agrees with 75-80% of what the pdoc said (I asked him what he disagreed with and he said, “I wasn’t keeping track.” Hmph.)

He was glad that she said all of those things to me, because if he had said them I would not have been as positive (absolutely true, and I told him so.)

He wanted to know why I thought it was great, and I said it was because I felt heard.

He wanted to know how her responses made me feel about my therapy with him, and I told him that I thought I felt better about our therapy.

He asked me why I was seeing a pdoc if I don’t want to take meds, and I said because I do want my klonopin, I just don’t want anti-depressants. I told him that I lied to her and told her that I take 1mg of klonopin per day, when I actually take .25mg per day. He wanted to know why I was saving it up, and what stash level I am comfortable with. I told him that I like to have 75 to 100 klonopins at any given time. He didn’t understand that. I told him about last December when I really needed some klonopin, but I wouldn’t dip into my stash and I waited two days for old pdoc to call me back and get the rx filled. He said that seemed strange to him. I told him that Advil is available in bottles of 1000 – and who needs 1000 Advil? He said those are usually meant for families. I said that even if every person in the family has a headache every day, it would take a long time to go through that bottle of Advil. He asked if I had 600 Advil, and I had a headache, would I take some out of the Advil stash, or would I go to the drugstore to buy some more Advil? I said that he couldn’t compare Advil to klonopin, because klonopin is a lot harder to get. He asked if I was planning to commit suicide with klonopin and I said no, definitely not. He asked why not and I said it is too unreliable, and I don’t want to end up a vegetable or have my stomach pumped. That would be way too embarrassing. If I am going to kill myself I am going to do it completely, and not make some halfhearted attempt to draw attention to myself.

Then out of the blue, J asked about the cutting. We haven’t talked about this in a long time. I don’t bring it up, and he never asks. I don’t know why he never asks and I don’t know why asked today. He mentioned the “flowchart” collage that I created a long time ago to explain the self injury cycle and he asked me when the last time I cut was, and what stage I am in now. I told him that I remember the last time I cut, but I can’t remember when it was. I know I was at work, and I used my boss’s knife. He keeps his knives very sharp, which I noticed because I frequently make my breakfast or lunch at his house, or cut up fruit for a snack. He rarely cooks, but he sharpens his knives. I never sharpen mine, and they would not cut me very easily.

I told J that I did feel the urge to cut after our “running” self-disclosure episode, but I wouldn’t do it because I didn’t want J to be the reason why I cut. He thought that perhaps I used quitting the hotline as a substitute for cutting, and did I feel that same sense of relief after quitting that I do after cutting? I told him that I don’t think I did, because the running issue has not yet been resolved, there is no closure. He asked me what closure looks like, and I said either I reach a point where I feel that the other person understands my feelings, or we agree to disagree. But right now I feel that we are still in limbo regarding this issue. He said that in a “normal” relationship if there is a conflict a person can leave to go for a walk, or go to the store, but in a 45 minute therapy relationship you have to stay to work it out. I think that in a normal relationship you can work things out as they come up, but in therapy you can only work on them during the 45 minutes you get, and lots of things stay unresolved.

Then he brought up how I take the responsibility and blame for every relationship conflict, or every mistake that anyone makes. Yes, I know this. I think he is really trying different ways to get me to stop doing this, and I appreciate the difficulty and frustration he must feel. Because I feel it too. He thinks if I could stop the “cycle” before I get to the self-hating phase it would be helpful. I do too. But I think my feelings of self-loathing and not being good enough are so deep, so ingrained in the core of my being, that anything I do will not be able to reverse this. I told him that I don’t want to be one of those people who never take responsibility for anything they do wrong, who always blame everything on everyone else. He said, “So you are erring on the side of caution and taking everything on yourself to ensure that you don’t become one of those people?” I know it seems black and white, doesn’t it? There has to be an area in the middle that is more, well, in the middle.

Then J told me that he was late for an appointment last week. He had to go somewhere at a time of day when he doesn’t normally travel, and it would take 30 minutes if it wasn’t a busy time of day, so he allotted 40 minutes, but it actually took 48 minutes. He called when he was on his way to say he would be late. He said he felt that he did the best he could, and that he wasn’t giving an excuse. He told me that his appointment was at 7:30am. When he got there he saw other people arriving late as well, and he thought that maybe they gave out the 7:30 appointments freely, knowing people would be late.

I told him that if it was me, I would be anxious that the office staff would think I was making up excuses as to why I was late, and that they would have a negative opinion of me after that. He said that crossed his mind, but he knew that once he showed up and that he was nice, they would realize that he was just caught in traffic and it was one of those things that couldn’t be helped, that it didn’t reflect badly on him.

He could have stopped the discussion there, but he had to go on to tell me that this was a medical appointment. I don’t know why he told me that, but at that point the thought that went through my head was, “Good! Maybe he got hurt in that 5K race he did and had to go to the doctor.” Ugh. Whatever was the point of his disclosure was totally lost on me then.

Sigh. One of the things we talked about earlier was that my pdoc said that therapy is talking about the little things over and over again, and how I feel that so many things J and I have discussed are still unresolved. So something I thought of is to put each of those unresolved issues on a slip of paper to put in my box that is in his office. We have only taken something out of the box once since we came up with the idea, but I have lots of ideas to put into the box. These things fall into the following categories:

Things that I haven’t had time to bring up (ie; J’s email from last week, the lion metaphor, etc)
Things that I feel we have discussed before and I feel like he doesn’t want to hear them anymore (the January email summarizing my whole year, that he dismissed after one session)
Things that I am too uncomfortable to bring up (when he searched for “sex” on my blog)

Yeah, I hold a grudge. It might feel good to get these things out, at least on paper and in his office. I wonder if he will check the slips of paper when I’m not there. Hmm….

Oct 21 2010

Writing Class and My Foster Child

Writing class was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Last night was the last session. I wrote about my foster child, which is why I can’t post my story on my blog, it is confidential. For some reason I read my story first, I think the teacher thinks it will reduce my anxiety if I get it over with. My story was technically longer than I it was supposed to be, we have a 5 minute limit. But they said it was ok. I cried while I was reading it, which surprised me, I didn’t think I would get emotional. But I continued on…until the last paragraph. I couldn’t finish, so I gave it to the woman next to me to read.

Other people were crying while I read the story. And we had quite a long discussion afterwards, which doesn’t usually happen because we are on a tight time schedule so that everyone has time to read. They wanted to know more about my foster child and the CASA program, and my teacher said that my story could probably be published in the Sunday magazine section of our newspaper – and this is a major newspaper, it’s circulation is 800,000 on Sundays according to Wikipedia. Unfortunately I can’t publish anything about my foster child.

One woman in the class, who is a human rights activist, told me of a phenomenon whereby people working with trauma survivors take on some of the trauma themselves. She told me this is particularly true of sensitive people. Another person told me that she is surprised I would take on this role because I am so sensitive. I think she said I have a tender heart. That’s a nice phrase. I’m not sure about the trauma passing along to another person, not sure if that is possible, but it is interesting.

I told the class that I am especially emotional about my foster child right now because of the fact that I am stepping down as his advocate. I told them that he said that he wants to consider me a lifelong friend and what he said in a text to me the other day when I asked him if he thinks he still needs an advocate:

It ok if i dnt have 1 u did all i wanted be a blessing to some1 else so u can change thier life like u did minr

I’ve actually been wanting to get another tattoo, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I was waiting to see if something would come to me. Now I know, I think I would like those words on my tattoo “be a blessing to some1 else so u can change thier life like u did minr”. Just like that. He certainly changed my life.

At the end of the class we exchanged hugs and said goodbyes. I got emotional again, particularly with two of the women who I feel a kinship with, and the 81 year old guy with the dazzling blue eyes. One of the women, the one who encouraged me to come back to the class by telling me she was writing less emotional pieces to share with the class, told me that she has never met anyone like me. She meant it in a good way. That was really nice of her to say. She is 15 years younger than me, but I feel like she could be my friend. I hope we all keep in touch or have meet ups.

Meanwhile, all of this emotion is taking its toll on me. Yesterday I had an attack of low blood sugar at the grocery store, which was combined with a bit of a panic attack. I bought a sweetened iced tea and sat on a bench outside the store. I wasn’t sure how I would get back to work, it’s only a half mile walk, but I was feeling so faint and shaky. I don’t know, I guess it passed and I made it back. Shivering and sweating and shaking.

My eyes are so puffy and red it looks like I’ve been in a fight. I’m either crying or on the verge of tears at every moment. I’m reading articles about suicide. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do it. I’m a planner, not impulsive. I just like to have a plan.

I am angry at myself for letting J’s words get to me so badly. I thought I was doing pretty well for the last month and a half, I was even looking at my calendar trying to figure out when my next fall down the rabbit hole would be, since they occur about every three months. But that god damn stupid running conversation sent me into a spiral. And our session this week didn’t really help me. He apologized and said he might have been a jerk, but I keep thinking if I was a better person, or if he cared about me, he wouldn’t have been a jerk. That I somehow caused all of this and it’s my fault that I am now suffering because of it.

I just don’t know what to do to feel better.

Oct 16 2010

Writing Class Recap

Wednesday night was my return to the writing class. Everyone was there, unlike class the week before. On that night there was a terrible bus accident on the highway and traffic was tied up for hours. So some people read their stories from that week, in which the topic was love and sex or a turning point, and some read this week’s stories, which were about work.

I mentioned here that when I first heard the topic “work” I immediately thought of what I failure I am in that department. How I am 50 years old and I have never figured out what it is that I want to do, that I go from job to job, and luckily my husband supports me or I would starve and die. Well, guess what? About 50% of the people in the class have the same situation. They didn’t talk about it in quite that way though. They made it seem like a positive thing – like they learned from each experience they had, that they had great experiences along the way, that it was an adventure. Of course they could all be full of shit!

I talked about an older man in the class, I can’t remember what I named him on the blog – Stan? I had told him that he had amazing eyes. He missed the last class because he was having a pacemaker inserted, and there was a complication and he had to go back to the hospital. He wrote a story about this experience. He is actually 81 years old (I thought he was 70) and his wife is 17 years younger than he is. They have no children. He wrote about how he knows that he only has a one in two chance of living for the next five or 10 years (I can’t remember the exact statistic) and he and his wife talked about taking their own lives if they got to the point where they were too sick to be comfortable. He must have read the Final Exit, because he decided he would do the gas canister with the bag over his head. His wife wants to do pills.

Their only problem is his wife doesn’t want to help him. She doesn’t want to witness what he will be like, alive and vibrant one moment, placcid and without life the next. He is hoping she will change her mind because he wants her to be with him when he does it. His fear is that she will be alone after he dies, because they have no children. I told him that I would be her friend. The others in the class agreed.

One woman wrote about her childhood. She had a brother seven years older than her who died of leukemia, and another brother five years older than her who committed suicide when she was 18. He had schizophrenia. That was a very emotional story, I give her so much credit for being able to read it.

The other man in the class wrote a great story about work, written in the form of a cover letter to a future employer.

Another woman wrote about the time she worked for a major electric company that had a high ranking official who committed suicide because she lied on her resume. A really gripping story.

A young woman in the class wrote about when she lost her virginity – very heartwarming and funny story. Another woman wrote about a young love and her story had a great twist in the end – none of the story actually happened, and she ended up making a different decision and marrying someone else.

I was very nervous when I read my work story, but I knew I wouldn’t cry. I tried to read with the appropriate degree of feeling and humor, and everyone laughed really hard. It made me feel good.

Then a woman wrote about her high school reunion – she had graduated 30 years ago. She wrote about depression, and how a woman she was in high school with suffered from depression, and her whole personality changed when she was having a depressive episode. So people would say to her, “What’s going on with you” or “How can I help?” However when the woman in the class had a depressive episode no one noticed. She was suffering and she just wanted someone to ask her those questions.

After she finished we had a discussion about how some of us were raised to hide our feelings, that our families were ashamed of feelings, or for some reason we were taught that is isn’t right to show weakness. It was a great conversation. I was thinking this class is like group therapy. Then I thought maybe I could benefit from group therapy. I mean, here I am showing up week after week to talk to someone who really doesn’t understand me very well, who is perfect (well, logically I know he isn’t and I know about something in his past that was far from perfect), but in a group there are other people who have been through the same thing, who feel the same feelings, who would really “get it”. I have been in a group once before and I can’t say it was really helpful except to know I wasn’t alone. But it was more of a support group than a therapy group, maybe there is a big difference. I wouldn’t even know how to find a group, or what kind I would need. But I liked the feeling of being understood and understanding other people as well.

We only have one more class left, but the teacher said something about how the group continues on their own. I hope that is true. For the next class I think I won’t write about me – I want to write about my foster child. Something different!